For those that
have been following the Acacia Saga with me, you know that Acacia
came out with Round 1 of their business model to license IP with
the V-Chip patent. After convincing many TV manufacturers to pay
them over $25M in licensing fees, Sony faught them in court, and
won! The court found Sony to be not-infringing.

Round 2 for
Acacia is the DMT patent, the broad and ridiculous interpretation
of a patent that they claim is the foundation patent to downloading/streaming
audio/video from a (web) server.

The amount of
prior art is larger than the mound of evidence that was found against
OJ, so the outcome of current lawsuits against Adult Entertainment
websites and Cable industry should be quite different (if the patent
claims don't stick, you must acquit).

Round 3 has
been looming for a while, and now it is here, in the form a of a
patent that was acquired by one of their early liensees of the DMT
patent. Acacia has acquired a patent from Lodgenet that they describe
as the "HotSpot" patent, that claims ownership to the
idea that when a computer is trying to connect to a network (via
wireless or wired), that the system detects they are new and don't
have an IP, and redirects them to a page where they can signup to
get an authorized IP. The interpretations are probably including
additional broader claims.